Latest Contributions by DanaNolan

If you are mixing letters and number, any simple serif font, because they make numbers easier to distinguish (letter l vs number 1). I like Century. ... View more

For example, I had some clusters of buildings, buffered and dissolved by location name, as an index feature. The location name was the focus of each map page. In some areas,  peripheral buildings did not match to this location name or trails that seemed important to show were being cut off,  but I did not want to increase padding around the other pages by making changes to all the pages. I simply made the buffers visible, then moved some of the vertices of the problem buffers so the extents would pick up what I wanted; I left the other buffers alone. ... View more

Exporting a page causes all DDPs to refresh, which includes centering on the index feature, so you cannot correct extent problems that way. You can save your MXD, disable DDP, and export, then add the problem pages into your PDF. Can you edit the index feature? Or copy it and then edit the copy? If so, just edit the index feature so it pulls in what you want extent-wise. Make it fill the area that is being cut off. ... View more

If by "selection layer" you mean using the selection/save as selection layer, and not a definition query or join-based select, then I don't have a lot of hope. I stopped using these years ago, as they are unstable. I believe they store a hash-table of the selected keys (ObjectiDs?). These seem to disappear when the layer is changed, so then everything is selected. I have never heard of the wrong records being selected, but it would make sense that that happens sometimes too. Next time, you could try exporting the keys of your chosen records to a file, then using a join to do your selection from your original file. This is kludgy, but reliable. ... View more

To clarify, what the tool converts is simply georeferenced PDFs (exported from ArcMap to PDF with this option), Georeferenced PDFs have limited functionality. The geotools in Adobe software are not very precise and the only coordinates are lat-long. A "geoPDF" file, as the feds, including my organization, are promoting, is a product produced by TerraGo software (an ESRI add-on). Much higher functionality and precision, e.g. multiscale symbology display, the ability to work with UTM and MGRS, and the ability to annotate maps to create a shapefile (without ESRI software and using mobile devices). A thoughtfully created GeoPDF is basically a standalone map similar to a Web map, without need for an Internet connection. n.b. I am still waiting for permission to install the TerraGo creation software, but I can't wait to use it. ... View more

Empty output error can be due to a definition query on something that changes due to the geoprocessing tool. In other words, if there are no longer any records that satisfy it. I also turn off background geoprocessing, in every map, every time, unless it is needed. This usually causes a more generic 99999 error, though, not empty output. Really don't get why something so problematic as this is the default. Pretty much all tools that change an existing file will fail due to locking issues. I concur with turning off the indexing service too, because it eats up too much processing. ... View more

Save the label symbology to your style. If you do this at the label properties screen, it will save symbology, expressions, and Maplex rules. If you do the save at the label symbol screen, it will save only the text formatting. I can't explain how to do this exactly because my ArcMap is down right now. Then apply the saved style to your label class(es) after you have changed the label fieldname. ... View more

No tool, just ArcCatalog. The unregistered files are in the same SDE gdb, sometimes in the same feature dataset, sometimes loose or in another dataset. I just keep checking properties in Catalog until I find the culprit. I also had the problem of not being able to unregister the feature data set. . I inherited a system that no one could figure out to edit for a long time. As I have fixed the existing tables and know to register new annotation, this problem is fading. ... View more

I get this error whenever a new table (unversioned) is added, usually feature-linked annotation file since I don't think about registering those. I have been able to solve this by doing an Analyze on the new table, Create Versioned View, and Register as Versioned. This often requires closing ArcCatalog and re-opening to get the Register as Versioned to ungray. Honestly, I am not sure that the order matters or that it works the same way every time. If there is a nonspatial table involved in a relationship to your feature class, this also needs the same handling. Thanks to ESRI SDE support from last year's UC, I was able to find the offending table and make our features editable again. ... View more

You should be able to append and delete with topology tables. It could be you have to turn off the option to instantly validate your edits. However, some times I am required to be in an edit session to do geometry or field calculations. Whether this is due to relationships or topologies in those files would be hard for me to test. As a better workaround, you can essentially append within an edit session by using the Load Objects (aka Simple object loader), which is an older append tool for ArcMap or ArcCatalog. ... View more

I am still having this problem too. Last night, all users were off my SDE db, ArcMap was closed, ArcCatalog just opened (and closed/opened more than once after a reboot), but yet the ability to change the reference scale was still grayed out. I really don't see where the lock is coming from. ... View more

I did exactly what you did and can't repeat the problem, though I believe I have seen this before. I am using 10.1. It probably is a glitch that comes from your data, perhaps related to what percentage of your line overlaps the polygon. ... View more

I have not used this tool. For a dumb DDP index, I have used the Create Fishnet tool. You can set the extent of your layer as the outer box and then specify the number of columns and rows you want. For smarter DDP indexes, I usually just buffer my actual data and edit buffer shapes that don't seem like they will work well as index shapes. You might also consider just exporting the bigger map and tiling using Adobe Acrobat. This will literally just print sections, while a DD map will repeat the legend and other content on every page. ... View more

This happens with GlobalID fields (GUID), which are used by programmers and in database replication. Assuming one side of your join has a GUID field, you may need to make a copy of the feature class without this field. I would call this problem a bug; a join should be able to ignore GUID fields. ... View more